Chapter 5 - Knowledge “Acts”

QUESTION ASKING AND ANSWERING

Question asking and answering is a foundational process by which what people know tacitly becomes expressed, and hence, externalized as knowledge. Boahene and Ditsa [2003] suggest that Information Management systems target a base of expressive speech acts by mainly supporting the recall of meaning-attribution while Knowledge Management systems target regulative and constantive speech acts primarily to support the organization and management of dynamic complexity. They reason that IM addresses questions such as ‘Where,’ ‘Who,’ ‘When,’ and ‘What,’ while KM targets problems involving dynamic complexity, addressing solutions to questions such as ‘How’ and ‘Why.’ Another category of questions, “What-if,” will also fall in the domain of knowledge activity. Since such questions necessitate predicting and prioritizing outcomes, attempts to address such “what-if ” questions will require integrating understanding of “what” with “why” and “how” to arrive at reasonable resolution.

POSTING CONTENT TO REPOSITORIES

Contributing content such as lessons-learned, project experiences, and success stories is another approach to knowledge sharing. Professionals may not have the time to hand off a document for submission to an appointed surrogate either. For many professionals who are used to online communication and accessing databases and discussion lists, we could argue that it is quicker and easier for the professionals to make the contribution themselves. As awareness increases for the importance of making knowledge explicit, more and more products will appear to help with creating knowledge bases and decision recommendations, but it is a mindset open to using, sharing, and creating knowledge that will make a difference in creating an organizational knowledge culture.

(RE)USINGKNOWLEDGE

Desouza et al. [2006] assert that the decision to consume knowledge can be framed as a problem of risk evaluation, with perceived complexity and relative advantage being identified as factors relating to intentions to “consume” knowledge. However, it is essential that the knowledge consumer is able to reasonably frame his or her knowledge needs.

KNOWLEDGE-BASEDDECISIONMAKING

In general, decision making involves identifying alternatives, projecting probabilities and outcomes of alternatives, and evaluating outcomes according to known preferences and implications for stakeholders.

Information used in one activity that results in new knowledge will, in turn, be used to guide selection of alternatives in future tasks that involve decision making. Codified rules and routines would be relied on to support evaluation of alternatives and selection of action decisions. Choice of alternatives, and decision outcomes then provide the backdrop upon which sense making, or justification, of decision rationale occurs. Such decision rationale, and its associated sense making can then be codified for (re)use in other contexts, applied to future activities that draw on it to create new instances of knowledge. In such decision oriented activity, we have proposed that “what-if ” questions are the dominant type of speech act performed.Support for such scenario predicting questions will demand rich context upon which to apply knowledge of the past and the present to bear on the problem or situation at hand.